What do you make of Keir Starmer’s first 100 days in office, which came to an end on 12 October?
His Labour Party had a +6 ‘net favourability’ rating upon taking office. 90 days in it was down to -20. Based on what people are telling us on Socialist Party campaign stalls on high streets up and down the country, that comes as no surprise.
Is it any wonder? Since taking office, Starmer’s government has cut pensioners’ winter fuel payments while increasing the price cap on our heating bills. Starmer has continued to excuse the Israeli state forces’ brutal slaughter and bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon. Tata Steel bosses have been allowed to slash 2,500 jobs at the Port Talbot steelworks, at the same time as receiving a £500 million grant from government.
Seven Labour MPs, who days into the new government tried to remove the Tories’ cruel two-child benefit cap, were suspended and now sit as independents. Five others, including Jeremy Corbyn, form the Independent Alliance group of MPs – most elected on the basis of mass revulsion against Starmer’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, particularly among Muslims.
Starmer’s 100-day-old government, already with a shrinking majority, rests on the fragile foundations of winning the votes of just one in five eligible voters in the general election. And how many of those are already drawing conclusions about in whose interests this Labour government is governing?
30 October Budget
Exactly what will be in chancellor Rachel Reeves’s 30 October Budget is unknown, but it is clear that she will put forward a budget in the interests of the capitalist elite, not the working-class majority. Speculation is rife over what measures will be taken to fill the £22 billion ‘black hole’ while sticking to pledges not to raise income tax, employees’ national insurance contributions and VAT.
Reeves might change the self-imposed rules to allow borrowing for investment. But on day-to-day spending on public services, think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies says £25 billion of tax rises will be needed for public service funding to even remain at its current too-low level.
Meanwhile, the cost of government borrowing is increasing. The Financial Times describes a “tightrope” the government needs to walk to avoid something like a Liz Truss fiasco. Undoubtedly the ghost of Truss is being conjured up by some investors as a means to threaten Reeves not to raise taxes on the super-rich. She has already watered down on plans to tax non-doms. But such is investors’ lack of confidence in British capitalism, a gilt sell-off cannot be ruled out now or in the future. And further increases in government borrowing costs, which have already risen to pretty much Truss levels since, can further wipe out spending.
Reeves took to the stage at Labour Party conference in September to promise “no return to austerity”. In fact, her budget will mean no end to austerity. Public services will remain underfunded – universities facing funding crises or a student fee increase, local authorities facing so-called ‘bankruptcy’, public sector workers worse off in real terms than they were a decade ago and their recent pay rises not fully funded. Whatever Reeves and Starmer say about austerity, it will feel like austerity.
Workers’ rights
With three days to spare, Labour introduced the Employment Rights Bill to Parliament. The Trades Union Congress in September passed the following as part of a composite motion: “Congress notes the Labour Party’s 2024 general election manifesto committed to implementing ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’ in full – introducing legislation within 100 days. If the government has not legislated within the first hundred days, a special TUC congress will be called to discuss next steps.” This was moved by PCS union delegates, pushed for by left activists including Socialist Party members, part of the Broad Left Network in that union.
Importantly, the Employment Rights Bill removes the voting thresholds imposed by the Tories’ anti-union 2016 Trade Union Act. However, it doesn’t – as the National Shop Stewards Network has campaigned for – remove all Tory anti-union laws. There would be nothing to stop the government using emergency legislation to make the changes now, rather than wait for the laborious months and years-long toing and froing in Westminster to reach its conclusion.
In 1997, Tony Blair pledged that under New Labour “British law” would be “the most restrictive on trade unions in the Western world.” Many trade unionists will welcome the repeal of some of the measures introduced by the Tories over the last decade, but the rest of the Tory restrictions that Blair kept are to remain. Nor does the Bill return prison officers their right to strike, something taken away by the last Labour government.
Labour’s plans have not been implemented “in full” by the Employment Rights Bill. The original ‘Labour’s New Deal for Working People’ was launched by Angela Rayner and Labour affiliated trade unions at the 2021 Labour conference. Since, sections of the Labour leadership and machine have taken chunks out of it on behalf of big businesses.
Enough for Unite general secretary Sharon Graham to describe it in May as having “more holes than Swiss cheese”. It has been watered down still further by a series of ‘round table discussions’ and ‘consultations’ with big business. That process will continue, large sections of the bill being subject to secondary legislation and further consultation.
Still a fight
Angela Rayner now writes in the Financial Times: “Ultimately, whether you’re in government, a FTSE 100 CEO or a union rep, we all want the same things”. A business group speaking to the BBC disagrees, it thinks: “There will still be a fight, but the fight has been postponed”.
The capitalist bosses are relentless in their fight for their own profit interests, including to make sure there are as few obstacles as possible to their exploitation of workers. Clearly the trade unions need to stay in that fight.
In 2022, P&O Ferries fired 800 workers by video call and tried to rehire them again on worse pay and conditions. Transport Secretary Louise Haigh labelled the company a “rogue operator” in announcing the new laws, which fail to outright ban the practice. But days later, the bosses of P&O owners DP World were guests of honour at Labour’s investment summit and Starmer was admonishing Haigh for her comments.
Many trade union leaders will try to use the Employment Rights Bill to shield the Labour government from their members’ anger. They will try to use the public sector pay deals in a similar way, although it will be clear to many trade unionists that the level at which the government has made their pay offer was based on how likely it thought they would be prepared to strike.
However, this will not work for long. Workers have had a taste of their collective strength and power during the strike wave. And for most workers, life under a Labour government will continue to feel a lot like life under the Tories: real pay well below where it was a decade ago, and public services crumbling.
Socialist Party members are fighting in the trade unions, arguing that they should be at the heart of opposition to Starmer’s austerity. By being prepared to mobilise members to fight industrially, and by taking steps to establish their own political voice – a new mass workers’ party.
The Labour government probably feels like it has been a stormy first 100 days in office, but it has been calm compared to what is to come. Such is the crisis of the capitalist system they defend in Britain and internationally, the storms will just keep rolling in.
